


Hunger

by ellispark



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Because why be sad about this year's finale when you can be sad about last year's finale?, Eating Disorders, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Season/Series 13, Suicidal Ideation, Temporary Character Death, spncanonbigbang18
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-06 02:02:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15184328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellispark/pseuds/ellispark
Summary: Dean takes his meal and throws it away, plate and all. He's not hungry. How can he even begin to eat, knowing what he kept from Cas — what he kept from both of them?They could have had something, and now all Dean has is this gaping, empty hole in his stomach, in his chest, and he has to learn to breathe and eat and move around it.A post-13x01 story.





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of an extra warning note: Dean is not in a healthy state of mind in this story, and his thoughts reflect that. There are some suicidal thoughts/actions, and a lot of Dean blaming himself for things that aren’t his fault (as per usual). I do promise it’s not 100 percent sad though, if that helps.

The kid is always hungry. Always.

It’s a day’s drive from Washington to Kansas, and Dean could make it in under twenty-one hours, but the kid keeps asking for food, and Sam caves every time.

“Dean,” Sam says, and he looks so damn exhausted, “let’s pull over and eat.”

“Dean, let’s pull over at that motel so you can sleep.”

“Dean, pull over and let me drive. You look tired.”

_Dean, Dean, Dean. Pull over, pull over, pull over._

It’s been two fucking days, and they’re only 50 miles from the Wyoming-Nebraska border when Jack pipes up from the back seat. “I’m hungry,” he says. Again.

Dean pulls over before Sam can say anything, stopping in the parking lot of some super Wal-Mart, the kind where they sell out the parking spaces along the road to restaurants. There’s a Wendy’s, a Taco Bell, a Panda Express. A worldwide exposition of the finest fast foods the Midwest has to offer. He gets out of the car before either of the others can, ignoring Sam’s shout of “Where are you going? Don’t you want anything?”

His stomach definitely wants something. It aches in that way he hasn’t felt for a long time, since he was a kid. Probably the product of giving it next to nothing, not counting whiskey and bourbon, for the past three days. Dean walks past all the other cars in the lot, headed for the Wal-Mart. Some states have weird liquor laws that only allow certain stores to sell the strong stuff, and he can’t remember how it works in Wyoming, but Wal-Marts everywhere seem to be an exception to the rule. And he needs something strong, something to fill the ache in his gut and soothe over the burn in his chest.

He hasn’t even made it to the liquor aisle when the kid shows up behind him. Dean didn’t hear Jack following him, though he shouldn’t be surprised by now. Jack tends to stick close to the Winchesters, a little lost duckling tailing the first people it saw. Only he usually follows Sam around, not Dean. And Sam’s nowhere in sight.

“He’s getting us food,” Jack explains, and Dean rolls his eyes and continues on his mission, ignoring the little voice in his head that says it’s fucked up to bring a veritable three-day-old boy to the 21-and-over section. “He said he’d get something from every place for me to try, but I want chocolate.”

 _Of fucking course,_ Dean thinks, pausing to evaluate the whiskey selection. It’s not great.

“He’s... worried about you.” Jack looks over the drinks, tilting his head in confusion. Dean swallows hard. “I can feel it.”

“Don’t do that,” Dean says, and it’s one of less than ten sentences he’s spoken since they left Washington. “Don’t read people like that; they don’t like it.”

Jack shifts uncomfortably, and Dean notices the sleeves on the jacket Sam bought for him the other day are too long. The jacket makes him look smaller than he actually is. No one would guess the kid with his fingertips just barely poking out of his sleeves is the most powerful being on Earth.

“I can’t help it,” Jack says, and Dean doesn’t respond. He picks up the cheapest bottle of whiskey on the shelf, because it’s not like it matters if it tastes good. That’s not what it’s for.

“We’ll get your chocolate when we check out,” he tells Jack, and that’s the last thing Dean says all day.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Cas sits on the edge of Dean’s bed. He reaches out a hand, two healing fingers pointed outward, and touches Dean’s forehead.

“Better now?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Dean doesn’t know why he sounds so choked up. Cas heals him all the time – everything from broken limbs to minor stuff, like this headache. But for some reason his eyes are itching, watery. Maybe he has allergies, too. Maybe Cas missed that.

Cas stands to take off his coat, and Dean doesn’t ask him for a second healing. He watches Cas undress, not hungry, not lustful, just... at peace. When Cas lifts up the covers and gets in on his side of the bed, curling around Dean automatically, Dean gets that feeling again, that pressure behind his eyes, so he closes them.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” he says, and Cas says, “But you want me to.” Dean relaxes against him, the same way he does every time Cas gets it, knows what he needs without Dean having to say the words. It’s such a relief to be together like this, to fall together without even trying.

“I love you,” Cas says into the skin at the back of Dean’s neck. Dean opens his mouth to say it back, to say it like he does every other night, but the words won’t come out. They’re jammed in his throat. He can’t breathe. His eyes ache and ache, and they’re wet and he’s crying and he doesn’t know why.

“Dean?” Cas’s voice is urgent, but it sounds faded, further away. Dean can’t feel Cas at his back anymore. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back. He’s burning, inside and out, exploding from within, bright light extinguished by black smoke...

Dean jolts awake. He’s sweating, sheets soaked around him, and his eyes ache from crying in his sleep.

Jack sits next to him, in the same spot where Cas sat just a minute ago.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/41623448550/in/dateposted/)

“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers. “I tried to help. Sam says you’re hurt, and I just wanted to make it better, to give you what you need...”

“Get the hell out,” Dean says, then he yells, “Get the hell out!”

Jack’s eyes widen in fear, turning yellow, then everything goes black.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Sam tells Dean he needs to be more patient.

“Jack doesn’t know how to handle his powers yet,” he says. “He didn’t mean it.”

_Jack didn’t mean to hurt you, Dean. He didn’t mean to throw you into the wall; you scared him. He didn’t mean to make you dream about Cas. He just latched onto the first thing he found in your subconscious._

_He didn’t mean to kill Cas, but Cas is dead all the same. Sorry, Dean. He didn’t mean it._

At the hospital the doctors put his arm in a sling — it’s not broken, just fractured. They also test him for signs of a concussion — positive, so that’s great — and they give him a lecture about the dangers of malnutrition (“You look a little thin, and poor eating habits make for brittle bones, son”). Sam watches him choke down a burger on the drive back to the bunker.

Dean avoids Jack for the next two weeks.  He can’t avoid Sam, though. His brother corners him, forces him to trade the whiskey for an egg omelet.

He starts eating again, just enough to stop the rapid weight loss. To survive. Never enough to feel full.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Sam is out on a case, and Dean’s babysitting.

He doesn’t know why Sam would think this is a good arrangement, but given the option to take Dean and Jack with him, Sam chose to go alone.

“It’s your arm,” he said. “And Jack isn’t ready.”

The truth is Dean’s fractured in more places than his arm, and Sam knows that full well. He also knew exactly what he was doing when he sat Dean down before he left and said, “Jack was looking for Cas. He wanted Cas to be his father. I just thought you should know.”

“Why?” Dean asked.  The question covers so much — _Why Cas? Why do I need to know that? Why tell me now?_

Sam just shrugged.

But Dean knows the answer to the last question. Because watching the kid eat a whole gallon of chocolate ice cream by himself, sitting cross-legged on Sam’s bed, eyes fixed on _Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,_ Dean likes Jack more than he ever has.

Not like that’s saying much.

“Are you hungry?” Jack asks as the outro music plays and another episode loads. He holds out his spoon. His melting ice cream drips on Sam’s bedspread. As much as Dean wants to hate him, he looks so fucking innocent. “I can share.”

“Why did you make me dream about Cas?” Dean asks in response, ignoring the pang in his stomach. He’s lost at least fifteen pounds in the last month, and his body wants food even when his mind can’t stand the thought of it. “Why that?”

Jack tilts his head to the side, a common expression of his, and Dean feels that familiar pressure building behind his eyes again.

“I can see inside people,” Jack says. “You were hungry.”

Dean’s always hungry these days, but that response doesn’t make any sense.

“What?” he asks, not expecting any real answer from the man-child. “What does that mean?”

Jack shrugs slightly, and his mouth downturns a little. _That’s Cas’s expression_ , _you don’t get to have it_ , Dean wants to scream, but he can’t scream at this kid — not when it might get him another fractured arm. Not when Jack chose Cas, and Cas chose him. Died for him.

“I can see what people feel,” Jack speaks slowly, as if he’s never considered his own powers before. “I could see my mother. She wanted to protect me. So did my father. He wanted to protect you, too.” Dean swallows hard. The ache builds. “ And you, Sam says you’re hurt, and now you are—” Jack points to Dean’s fractured arm, swaddled in a plain white sling. “—but before you were just hungry. You wanted my father; you needed him to keep you alive, like you need food and water. So I tried to give you what you needed.”

The show’s music plays in the background, the spoon drips ice cream onto the bed, and Dean’s heart pounds in his chest. But he wouldn’t mind if it stopped for a while.

“That’s not what I need,” he manages to choke out. “I don’t need false hope; I don’t want it, don’t give it to me. I need the real Cas, and he’s gone. Because of you.”

“I’m sorry.” Jack’s lower lip trembles, and Dean tries not to feel guilty about hurting the kid’s feelings because that fucking dream set him back. It shoved him further into the grave he’s been trying to crawl his way out of since they burned Cas on that pyre. “I’m sorry.”

“Eat your fucking ice cream,” Dean says, and he leans back against the headboard and closes his eyes.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Dean teaches Jack to cook. It’s Sam’s idea, because Jack is constantly hungry, and Sam can’t cook for shit.

It’s easier, Dean discovers, to be around Jack when they have a common goal to work toward. When Dean feels in control of the situation.

So he teaches Jack how to make burgers and lasagna, how to grill chicken and toss together a salad for Sam. They spend hours on a pie Jack burns, but Dean tells him “Good job” and watches with moderate disgust as the kid eats the whole damn thing, blackened edges and all.

It helps Dean to eat more, too, knowing Jack is watching every little thing he does, noting if Dean is eating enough calories to stay relatively healthy. He figures if Jack is satisfied with his food intake, he might ignore Dean’s emotional pangs from now on.

“I love food,” Jack says one day as Dean is picking at his pasta, trying to ignore Sam’s pointed glare from across the table. Jack devoured his plate within seconds. “I love it.”

“Jack, can you give us a minute,” Sam says, not really asking. Jack leaves, but only after piling more spaghetti on his plate. Sam waits until he’s out of the room before quietly saying, “Dean, you’re still eating, right?”

Dean rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, I am. Thanks for asking, mom.” They both choose not to comment on the poor choice of words. “I just don’t feel much like pasta tonight. Jack fucking loves it, though, so...”

Sam huffs a laugh.

“Yeah, well, he loves pretty much everything.”

Dean’s not sure why those three words pick now to make their presence known — maybe it’s because Sam is sort of smiling, thinking of his little protégé, and Dean wants his brother to be happy; maybe it’s because he’s held them in so long his heart can’t take it anymore; maybe it’s just because they’ve already put the biggest word on the table — but the next thing he says is, “You know I love you, right?”

They stare at each other, then both laugh awkwardly at the same time. Sam rubs the back of his neck, cheeks red.

“Yeah, Dean, of course. I mean, you’ve died for me, man. It would be kinda hard not to know after that.”

And that kills it right there. The brief reprieve from the load he’s been carrying snaps; the world comes crashing back down on Dean’s shoulders. The switch has been flipped, and he knows why he asked Sam that question.

“Is that what it takes?” Dean asks, and his voice cracks. “For people to know I love them?”

Sam understands immediately. His face falls, and he reaches out for Dean, aborting the gesture at the last second. His hand falls empty to the table between them.

“Dean,” he says, “no, no...”

“You know, the kid still thinks I hate him half the time,” Dean says, strangled. “I don’t, not anymore, but I can tell when he’s waiting for me to lose it and yell at him again. He gets this look, his eyes get all big and wide, his shoulders....” Dean hunches his shoulders, demonstrating. “He looks like Cas. Every fucking time.”

“Dean,” Sam says again. “That’s not—”

“I never died for him,” Dean says, and the weight is crushing him. “He never knew.”

“He knew.” Sam’s placating, trying to pick up the pieces of what was once an okay night. “Of course he knew.”

Dean thinks of Cas, thinks of the last time he saw him alive. They were fighting over Jack. Dean called him a dumbass and cracked a joke about angel killing bullets.

In all his precious memories, the ones Dean hordes and revisits at night when he’s alone and no one can hear him crying, Cas is either sad or stubborn. There’s no in between. It was always a battle between them. How could Cas have known how Dean felt when there was never a moment of peace?

“He didn’t know,” Dean says. “Don’t lie to make me feel better.”

He takes his meal and throws it away, plate and all. He's not hungry. How could he even begin to eat, knowing what he kept from Cas — what he kept from both of them?

They could have had something, and now all Dean has is this gaping hole in his stomach, in his chest, that he has to learn to breathe and eat and move around.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Sam finds another case and says they all need to go this time. He handles everything — the planning, the weapons cleaning, the drive, the motel payment. Sam guides, and Dean and Jack follow. Jack asks questions in a constant running commentary — _what are we hunting, why do we hunt, did my father do this, too —_ and Dean says nothing.

Sam takes them to a diner in town the first night they arrive, and Jack charms the waitress by being his usual sweet, naïve self. She brings them free pie.

Dean thinks of Mandy the waitress calling Cas handsome and Cas not recognizing the flirtation. Cas almost died that day. Cas told them he loved them that day. Dean can’t remember what he said in response. He stabs into his pie with more force than necessary, eating half a slice so Sam will stop looking at him like a kicked puppy.

At the motel they sleep in one room, Dean on the bed nearest the door, Sam and Jack sharing the one on the far wall. Jack doesn’t sleep much. He’ll lie perfectly still the whole night, eyes open and staring at the water-damaged ceiling tiles. It freaks Dean out, but not in the way Cas’s lack of sleep did. No, when Dean woke up to Cas staring at him it startled him, kicked in his fight or flight reflexes in addition to his hide-your-morning-wood reflexes. Jack’s unnerving silence just makes him... uneasy.

“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers from across the room, because of course he picks this moment to eavesdrop in Dean’s head.

“At least pretend to sleep.” Dean rolls his head to look at Jack. His eyes fall obediently closed, like a trained dog. The passive response prods at something in Dean, makes him think of Cas again — _always, always thinking of Cas_ — the way he sounded, hurt and off-put, when he once confessed to Dean, “Rowena told me I’m like a dog who thinks he’s people.” And Dean, like an asshole, joked, “Well, a dog would probably stick around more.”

The wave of self-hatred sweeping over him at this memory is enough to cause Jack to crack open an eyelid and say cautiously, “Dean?”

“What.”

“I can help with that.” He gestures between the beds, voice low so as not to wake Sam. “The pain.”

“How,” Dean says, flat and emotionless, because any feeling that comes through in his voice will only reveal more weakness, and the kid can already read him like a fucking book with an index that says _daddy issues, mommy issues, brother issues, self-esteem issues, dead secret love of your life issues_.

Jack doesn’t answer, seeing Dean’s weary acceptance as easily as he sees the fear and the anger and the _hunger_ , and he reaches over and touches Dean’s hand.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Dean dreams.

This time he knows it’s a dream, so he’s spared the inevitable pain of the realization that no, everything he’s ever wanted is not lying next to him on his memory foam mattress, staring at him without guile.

Jack didn’t put Cas in his head this time. Dean did this on his own, and he’s going to try and take the reprieve at face value instead of poking at it and watching it fall to pieces around him.

“Cas,” he says. He reaches across the bed and pulls Cas to him by the lapels of his trench coat, which Dream Cas apparently wears in lieu of pajamas. Cas comes willingly, and his head falls into place on Dean’s chest, right where Dean wants it, because Dream Cas and Dream Dean fit together perfectly.

So many of Dean’s dreams are terrible — the rack in Hell; Sam collapsing on the ground in a ghost town with a gaping hole in his back. Mom burning, Dad dying, and Cas’s grace exploding from his mouth and eyes as Dean screams. He waits for this dream to take a sharp left turn into a nightmare, only relaxing when Dream Cas stays quiet and still. Dean feels his breath on his collarbone.

This can’t last. Nothing good ever does.

“You’re not a dog,” he says while he can, pressing the words into Cas’s dark hair with his lips. Dream Cas doesn’t respond.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

He’s careless on the case.

Dean runs too quickly into the house where the poltergeist is, takes it throwing him against the splintered wooden wall without even a grunt of pain, and dives right back into the fray.

Sam notices, but he doesn’t say anything in front of Jack, who simply touches the walls of the abandoned farmhouse and catches the whole damn thing on fire, burning it down around the spirit as the three of them scramble through the smoke for the safety of the night air.

Sam pales as he watches the fire swallow the house whole, standing in the overgrown field outside. Dean knows he’s thinking of their mother. But Dean’s watched flames consume everyone he loves most at some point or another. He’s numb to it at this point.

Dean doesn’t notice he’s started walking toward the burning building as Sam yells after him. He’s only about fifteen feet away, close enough to feel the heat, for the smoke to roll over him in waves and for embers to singe his clothes and hair.

“Dean!”

What would it be like to burn, he wonders. For all of his many past injuries, burns are not something Dean has much experience with. He wonders what it would feel like to put his hand out into the heart of the flame, to watch the skin bubble and break and peel away from the bone, to lose pieces of himself to ash, ash that will float away on the night wind and join the remains of everyone he’s ever lit a pyre for.

“DEAN!”

Later Sam will swear the poltergeist wasn’t destroyed yet, that Dean followed its siren song through the crumbling front door and into the smoke. But Sam only says that to make himself feel better. The truth is Dean walks into the house of his own volition because he can’t stop imagining what the fire will feel like on his skin — how it will burn away the real pain, the pain he can’t drink away or run from, and give him something skin-deep to focus on. A rebirth from the emotional devastation to a physical one.

He only realizes how profoundly stupid this thought is when the wall at the front of the house collapses in behind him, trapping him in the smoke-filled foyer. It wasn’t that Dean wasn’t thinking before — God, he’d give anything to turn his mind off — it’s that he wasn’t thinking rationally, with the part of his brain that strives to watch over Sam, to do good in the world, to climb over every fucking mountain life sets in front of him. He was thinking with the part of his brain that wants to roll off a cliff on this latest mountain, and so he’s surrounded by black smoke with a wall of flame on one side, rubble on the other.

Dean drops to the floor to get underneath the smoke, but it’s useless. The fire in the former living room cracks and snaps and rages, and the heat creates an instant layer of sweat all over his body. The smoke burns his throat and lungs. He hacks and crawls and moves away from the flames toward the back of the house, where surely there must be a window or a door he can escape through. The edge of his pants leg catches fire somehow, and he feels it licking at his skin, peeling it away in strips that bubble up like packing plastic. It does not feel freeing. It reminds him of Hell.

Smoke fills the room from top to bottom, and behind him another wall falls, sending a trembling shock through the heated wooden floor. Dean might try to shout. He does pass out, eyes fluttering closed as the smoke grows too dense to see beyond his outstretched hands.

Before his consciousness fades, he could swear he sees a figure emerge from the smoke.

 _Cas,_ he thinks.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Dean will never get used to the sensation of looking down at his own body.

Billie raises her eyebrows at him, scythe in hand, cloak long and black and regal. She looks like Death. Dean can venture a guess on how she got the gig.

“This was reckless, Dean,” she says. Sam scrambles to do CPR behind her, crying and snot-nosed and making Dean feel miserable and guilty. “Even for you.”

Jack stands above the brothers, hands twitching, tears in his eyes. Dean actually feels bad for the kid — that he has to see this, that he dumped Sam’s pain on someone who won’t have any idea how to handle it.

“Are you gonna take me or what?” Dean asks, and he doesn’t look at her. His face, his real face, is soot-stained. His right leg is burned, blistering, the denim of his jeans melted into the skin. Jack’s hands are black with ash from where he grabbed Dean and pulled him out.

“I should,” Billie says. “You’re nothing but an empty shell at this point. Death would be a mercy for you.”

Dean watches his brother pump at his chest and his eyes burn. _Selfish_ , he scolds himself. _You let him down._

“But I won’t.” Billie lets go of the scythe, and it stands on its own. Dean’s lips part in shock at her words as she shakes her head at him.  “I have a job for you.”

“A job?” Dean asks, dumbfounded, as Sam continues his chest compressions. Jack is crying, whether because he’s sad Dean is dead or because Sam is crying and he mimics Sam in everything, Dean doesn’t know.

“That boy needs all the help he can get.” Billie doesn’t need to look at Jack. Dean knows exactly what she means. “You have work to do.”

She reaches out a black-gloved hand, and Dean says, “Hold — Hold on. Can you just — Can you tell me where angels go when they die?”

Billie tilts her head high and looks down upon him, regal. She is Death, and she has always been unimpressed with him and the way he shirks the laws of mortality. Dean’s taking a gamble asking her to not only bring him back to life but to tell him the secrets of the afterlife for creatures like her. Celestial beings, unknowable might in human packaging. Unlike Cas, who had a humanity about him even in the beginning, Billie has never been anything other than _other_ , _more than._ And she owes him nothing.

Yet —

“They go nowhere,” she says, red lips parting around the words easily, as if she’s happy to break the last straw Dean held in his grasping hands. “They become nothing.”

Dean wakes gasping, but his lungs don’t ache and his throat isn’t sore from breathing in black air. Sam buries him in a full-body hug, rocking him back into the high grass. Dean looks over his brother’s shoulder and sees his leg is fine, whole down to the light blond hairs that cover it. Jack kneels at his ankles, his eyes fading from yellow back to blue.

“You idiot,” Sam mumbles into Dean’s shirt, his tears soaking it. “You can’t—”

Dean clings to his brother, the way he did when they were children and Sam had nightmares, rubbing his hand down Sam’s back reassuringly and hiding his own tears in the scrunched up shoulder of Sam’s flannel shirt.

“Sammy...”

Sam leans back, grabbing Dean by the shoulders and shaking him.

“Never again!” he grits out. “Damn it, Dean,” and pulls Dean into his arms again.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Sam’s put Dean on suicide watch, which is... fair, Dean guesses. He did survive walking into a burning house by the skin of his teeth (or by the miraculous healing powers they now know Jack possesses).

He doesn’t mention Billie. Just another horseman telling him he’s dead inside and Cas is gone for good, all of which Dean already knew, thanks. Sam would be pissed if he knew Dean’s keeping that conversation a secret from him, but Dean needs to have something to keep to himself.

He’s never alone anymore. Jack hangs around him in the kitchen when he makes meals, asking more questions than he used to, and sometimes he follows Dean back to his room under the guise of wanting to watch Netflix together. Dean knows Sam put him up to it.

Sam tends to stick to the war room and the garage, covering the exits. He times his morning showers and nighttime moisturizing (seriously, what 34-year-old man _moisturizes_?) to coincide with when Dean is brushing his teeth or taking a piss in the communal bathroom.

Dean hates it. He’s essentially a prisoner, watched by twitchy guards every second of the day — except they expect him to pull a shank out and stab himself, not them. They’re treating him with kid gloves — Jack because he’s afraid _of_ Dean, Sam because he’s afraid _for_ him.

One day he snaps. Jack’s tailing him to his room, jabbering on about the _Great British Bake Off_ and new recipes for them to try, and when he says, “Sam says you need more carbohydrates. We could make bread?” Dean stops and slams his fist against the wall of the hallway.

“No!” he shouts. “I don’t want to make bread; I don’t want to watch your stupid baking show! I want you to stop following me! Goddamnit! Can I not get one second alone?”

Jack is there one second and gone the next, blipping out of existence within the space of a blink. Wings — the angelic shortcut to avoid confrontation. Dean should have expected that.

He collapses against the wall, sliding down to the tile, his head between his knees. He hasn’t even thanked the kid for saving his life. Cas would be so pissed at him. Pissed at his cruelty toward Jack, at his wallowing, at his dogged attempt to burn himself to a crisp just to feel something other than despair.

He’s slow to recognize his tears and ragged breathing for what they are — the long-postponed breakdown hitting as he sits slumped in the hallway, leaking out every ounce of pain he’s bottled up and shoved down. Dean sobs with a force that threatens to break his brittle bones, bent over until his forehead touches the floor and gasping for air. Now the levy has broken, and he can’t stop the debris sweeping out.

_You have failed, you’ve failed, you failed him in every way..._

Dean doesn’t even register Jack’s return with Sam at his heels, or his own lightheadedness, his brother’s worried “Dean?” as his eyes drift closed and he falls all the way down to the floor.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

“God, I miss you,” he tells Cas, sitting across from him in some nondescript diner. “I miss you so much.”

Cas pushes his fork around his plate like he hasn’t heard a word Dean says. Dean remembers this day — the real day. Cas killed Ishim, and Dean took him out for a slice of pie to cheer him up, as if that would fix anything. Cas wouldn’t eat it. He said it tasted like molecules.

“I wish you were here,” Dean whispers. “I wish things were different. I’m sorry, I am—” His voice shatters. “God, Cas, I should have said something when I had the chance. I love—”

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

He wakes to a soft hand on his forehead and a concerned, “Dean?”

Squinting through his sleep-burned eyes, Dean makes out Jody Mills’ face leaning over him. He tries to ask her what’s she doing here, sitting on his memory-foam mattress and looking concerned, but all he manages is a questioning grunt. Jody pushes his hair back from his forehead.

“Sam called me.” Her eyes are sad, full of pity. “He told me about Castiel. Oh, Dean...”

Somehow he ends up in her arms, face buried in her corduroy jacket, bawling his eyes out yet again.

Jody rocks him in a way he can’t imagine Mary doing, were she here, and the thought makes Dean cry for his mother, too. It’s a torrential weeping, a purge of the grief he’s shoved down as best he could for weeks. His mother, Cas, everyone else he’s ever dared to love, everyone except Sam, they’re all lost to him — or they will be eventually. He’s allowed to cherish no one and nothing except his brother, and he knows all too well even Sam can be taken away from him in the span of a second.

It may be a fact of life that everyone dies eventually, but Dean has seen so much death in such a relatively short span of time, the victim of a never-ending war, and he’s sick of it. Yet there’s nothing he can do to stop the tide of blood that follows the Winchesters in perpetuity, snatching away even the only loved one for whom death was never a guarantee.

The knowledge that Cas could have lived forever had he not met Dean is a weight too heavy to bear, so Dean drops it in Jody’s lap, letting her hold him until, exhausted, he cries himself to sleep.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Claire moves through the bunker like a hurricane, leveling them all in her anger and grief.

Maybe it’s worse because she doesn’t seem to understand the onslaught of pain for the thing wearing her father’s face. So she lashes out at the rest of them, finding clarity in rage. Dean knows the feeling. He thinks of shouting at Sam and beating the shit out of the Impala when John Winchester died.

Grief is complicated enough on its own, without adding resentment and love to the mix.

“When I told her over the phone she wasn’t like this,” Jody says. She’s talking to Sam in a low voice, but Dean hears her over Claire’s fading, thudding footsteps as the younger woman stomps away from the war room. “She tried to act like it didn’t matter. She said she barely knew him.”

Jack is gone again, blipped away to who the hell knows where the second Claire spotted him and asked, “You’re the devil’s kid? The one he died trying to protect?”

Jack escaped, but Sam and Dean couldn’t leave. They were pinned in place by Claire’s anger as she shouted, “You promised you’d watch out for him!”

Sam’s shaken by the outburst, but he manages to put a heavy hand on Dean’s shoulder anyway in an attempt to provide comfort. He squeezes, and Dean feels it to the bone. It hurts less than he wishes it did.

“She was probably in denial,” Sam says quietly, and no one comments on how he’s also in denial — still denying Mary’s gone for good. Sam’s trying to bring Jody in on some half-baked scheme to use Jack’s powers to crack into the other universe and rescue their mother. It’s something he’s never mentioned to Dean before. Probably because he thinks Dean is unstable, or he knows Dean would remind him their mother is dead. “She saw us, and it hit her hard.”

Jody shoots a worried glance at Dean, who hasn’t spoken a word since his crying jag this morning. He knows how pathetic must seem, cheeks tear stained and eyes red. He’s too tired to care.

“I should go talk to her,” Jody says.

“No, I’ll do it.”

It surprises everyone, including Dean, when he volunteers.

“Dean,” Sam starts, “you need to go lay down —”

“I’m fine.”

Dean brushes Sam off as he stands on shaky legs. Jody made him drink a smoothie earlier, but a little bit of protein can’t make up for weeks of only eating when Sam forces him to. He hasn’t stepped on a scale in years, but Dean knows what he looks like when he’s healthy. He knows that it isn’t normal, being able to count all his ribs and to see hollows in his cheeks. He’s sick, but it’s still his job to clean up his messes. And the way he figures it, any mess that belongs to Cas also belongs to him.

Sam wants to argue more, biting his lip and dropping his shoulders into his fighting stance, but Jody lays a hand on his arm to quell any protest.

“If you’re sure, Dean,” she says.

And Dean isn’t sure, but he goes anyway, walking down the long bunker hallway, heading for the room next to his. The door is cracked open, and it gives Dean pause. The last time he saw it open Cas was in there, months ago, after they first got Mom back. He used to sit on the bed and read old copies of Dean’s favorite books — _The Odyssey, Slaughterhouse Five, The Hobbit_ — while everyone else slept. Dean eases the door open, almost expecting to see Cas inside, lying on the bed with Netflix playing on Sam’s laptop, trench coat off and socked feet crossed at the ankles.

Instead he sees Claire, sitting cross-legged on the floor and holding a jar of peanut butter in her hands. Dean’s brow furrows.

“Where did that come from?” he asks, confused enough to not feel the absence of Cas hitting him over the head as soon as he walks into the room.

Claire glances up at him, face unreadable as she says, “I found it under the bed. There are like 40 different types of peanut butter under there.”

Dean sits down on the floor next to her, groaning as his knees crack. Normally Claire would comment on that, tease him about becoming an old man, but this time she just stares at the jar in her hands. It’s some brand Dean’s never heard of, cookie butter with a logo of a smiling sun. He’s pretty sure Sam doesn’t eat this brand.

“He told me once that he was human for a while,” Claire says, rolling the jar between her palms. “His favorite food was peanut butter and jelly, but he liked the peanut butter best. He said it tasted like molecules once he became an angel again.”

Dean thinks of a slice of pie at a diner, waiting nervously as Cas took a bite. “Dean, it tastes like molecules.” It seemed like a rejection of more than the pie at the time.

“I told him maybe he just didn’t have the right type of peanut butter,” Claire continues. “And apparently he went out and bought every kind he could find to try.”

Dean leans over to see around her. Underneath the bed are jars and jars of every type of spreadable butter, with blue tops and green tops and pictures of peanuts and flowers and old women in aprons on the labels. The thought of Cas quietly trying them out, one spoonful at a time, looking for a way to connect with his humanity again, takes Dean’s breath away.

Cas never said anything about it to Dean.

“He wasn’t supposed to die,” Claire says, voice cracking. “He didn’t even find a kind he liked yet.”

Dean carefully takes the jar from her hand, staring at the looped cursive font proclaiming “20% Less Fat!” He opens the lid and sees the clear mark of exactly one spoonful dug out of the cookie butter at the top.

It hits him, then, that this is another last piece of Cas. He’s been finding them all over the bunker — a book he left open in the library, an unused toothbrush Dean bought when Cas was human sitting on the sink — and ignoring them. Cas rarely stayed here. It’s not difficult to imagine those remnants as belonging to someone else — maybe Sam was looking at that book, maybe Jack’s been using that toothbrush. But this... All these jars of peanut butter lined up, hidden, in a bedroom with next to no personal effects — this is all Cas.

Dean sucks his lips in between his teeth and scrunches his eyes up in an effort to hold back a fresh onslaught of tears. Claire cries silently, her tears dripping down her cheeks and drying before they reach her jaw, an angry scowl on her face.

“You’re right,” he manages to say, choked, as he sets the jar on the floor. He can’t bear to imagine Cas, confused and disgruntled, trying to get peanut butter off the roof of his mouth. “He wasn’t supposed to die. I should have kept him safe. But I couldn’t do it.”

Claire puts her head in her hands, and Dean continues, shaky, “I’m sorry, Claire, I am. I have a hell of a long list of things I wish I could take back, shit I wish I could do different, and pretty much everything to do with Cas is at the top. And I can’t—” His voice breaks and he swallows hard before saying, “I can’t do anything about it. I failed him.”

Claire glares up at him, eyes red.

“You could get rid of that _thing_. Cas told me about him before he went MIA. Said he needed to kill him for the good of the world. Then he just stopped texting me. He was _brainwashed_ , Dean. That’s what Jody said.”

Dean rubs a knuckle over his eye to clear up the fog of the tears as he says, “Claire, it’s not Jack’s fault. At least — It’s not totally his fault.”

It hurts to admit, but it’s time to come clean. He’s been pushing the kid away and then pulling him back close since he was born, wavering between hating Jack and needing to protect him ‘cause that’s what Cas wanted, and Dean can do anything for Cas. Even befriend the devil’s son. But the truth of the matter is Dean’s projected a lot of his own grief and anger and inadequacy onto the kid, blaming a literal child for his own inability to save Cas. For his inability to tell Cas he loved him before they ran out of time.

It’s not Jack’s fault. Dean can’t even completely blame him for the brainwashing shit, not really. Not when he was just a baby reaching out in any way he could, trying to stay safe. Jack barely knows how to manage his powers on a good day, and he loves Cas, even though he only ever saw him through other people’s eyes. He’s not the reason Cas is dead.

Jack is a reason Cas is dead, maybe. But not the only reason. 

“That night,” Dean says quietly, “when Jack was born, we agreed to stay there and protect him and Kelly from Lucifer, ‘cause Cas wouldn’t leave them and I wouldn’t leave him. But I should have dragged him out of there. I should have stayed behind with him when he wouldn’t leave the other universe. I shouldn’t have let Sam drag me out. There a lot of fucking things I should have done, but the thing is — I should have put him first. And I didn’t. I never really have.”

Claire’s lower lip wobbles dangerously, and she turns into the shoulder of her jacket, her thick, curly hair covering the other side of her face. Dean knows how it is to never want other people to see you break down. To never want anyone to know how weak you are. He’s given up on hiding his own weakness — Sam, Jody, Claire, even Jack, they’ve seen it. He wishes he’d stopped hiding before, long enough to show Cas.

“So that’s on me,” he says, looking at the imprint of the spoon in the jar. “I acted like I could never find the right words to make him stay when I knew all along what they were. And I never said them. But don’t blame Jack. He’s been denied the chance to ever know Cas, and that’s worse than either of us had it, right?”

Claire pulls her knees up to her chest, her face still hidden.

“Can you give me a minute?” she asks, and Dean hears the tears in her voice.

“Yeah. Sure.”

Dean gets lightheaded when he stands, stars dancing at the edge of his vision, making him reach out for the wall. When he finds it, he runs his fingers over the cold stone and looks over this cold room, empty except for an unused bed for an angel who didn’t sleep and food for an angel who didn’t eat. Why did Cas ever stay here at all? There’s nothing for him here. Nothing for him on earth, really, to compare to the glory he must have known as angel.

Nothing here but Dean, and Dean knows he’s no kind of prize.

As Dean walks out of the room, Claire calls out from behind him.

“Wait!”

When he turns toward her, Dean’s surprised by something thumping up against his chest, barely managing to get his hands on it before it drops to the floor. The jar of cookie butter. He looks at Claire quizzically.

“You’re too thin,” she says. “He’d be worried about you.”

Dean wants to say _he’d be disappointed in me_ , but he doesn’t. Instead he nods, giving Claire a jerky little salute before he walks out of Cas’s room and into the hall, where he feels like he can breathe again.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Claire and Jody stay for five days, and although there’s a perpetual thundercloud rolling over Claire’s head, Dean knows Sam’s relieved by the distraction. For the first time in weeks he’s not the only one left to deal with Dean’s weary bullshit and Jack’s wide-eyed innocence. The women are a welcome diversion, stealing their lore books and arguing about hunting and cooking meals Jody watches Dean eat with the eye of a mother making her toddler choke down his greens.

Now Dean has four babysitters following him around the bunker all day, wishing him goodnight one by one to drag out the night, locking his guns away where they (foolishly) think he can’t reach them. He doesn’t comment on how overbearing they are, taking it as his punishment for hurting Sam and scaring Jack.

Jack avoids Claire when he can help it, her outburst fresh on his mind, but he adores Jody. He follows her like a little lost puppy. “Jody said she’d teach me how to make homemade mashed potatoes!” he announces to Dean one day, gleefully bouncing toward the kitchen. For a moment, in the face of such naked joy, Dean regrets abandoning their cooking lessons. But at least the kid is happy. Happier than he is when Sam is trying to teach him how to control his powers, anyway.

Dean hasn’t talked to his brother about it, but he knows the lessons are ramping up. He’s seen them in the library late at night — Sam leaning over the table and watching Jack glare at pencils and coins and cutlery, willing them to move. It only works about a quarter of the time.

Someday Sam and Dean are going to come to head over this — this plan to use Jack to open up a portal into the world that took their mother. Sam might be convinced she’s alive, but Dean knows Mary is dead. He knows it the way he knows Cas is dead. Lucifer would never have let her live. But it’s hard for him to think about the second death of a woman who’s been gone his entire life when his nightmares every night consist of Cas falling to the ground with a hole in his chest, his wings burned into the dirt.

Dean, unlike Sam, had his time with Mary once before, and it was ripped away from him then, too. That pain is ever present, an albatross he’s carried around his neck since he was four years old and watching his father drunkenly rant about how “unfair” the world is. He’s used to the weight.

And yeah, he’s seen Cas die before. He wasn’t in love with Cas then, though, and there was always a part of him that believed Cas would come back.

Dean doesn’t believe that anymore.

Dean doesn’t believe in much of anything anymore, including Sam’s schemes, but without the energy to argue, he lets them pass.

On the last night Claire and Jody spend with them, they order pizza, which Claire and Sam pick up to bring to the bunker. Dean methodically picks his slice of cheese apart while Sam and Jody talk about how Alex is doing at nursing school, ignoring the occasional scoff from Claire. Jack sits between Sam and Dean, too afraid of the angry blonde sitting across from him to say much, but he eats half a pizza by himself in about two minutes, sauce and a pleased smile on his face.

Dean idly wonders if this is what a real family dinner is supposed to feel like, then he remembers why they’re all here in one place — because Cas is dead. They should be wearing black. This is a funeral meal, with pizza in place of homemade casserole.

If they had been normal people, with normal lives, he likes to think he would have given Cas a proper burial and a proper funeral. Maybe buried him next to Mom’s first grave, ordered an ostentatious headstone that said, “Castiel Winchester, d. May 18, 2017. He Gave His All For Humanity.” Something like that. Dean would have worn black, would’ve been able to say a few words around the lump in his throat. There would have been a spot next to Cas saved for him — for when Dean finally bit the bullet and drifted up to that dream factory in the sky. And when Dean opened the door to his own personal heaven, Cas would’ve been there, trench coat and all. “Hello, Dean.”

_“They go nowhere. They become nothing.”_

Dean snaps his plastic fork in half.

“Uh, Dean?” Sam looks between the broken edge of the fork and Dean’s face. “Are you okay?”

Dean carefully sets the pieces under the edge of his plate. “‘M fine.”

The conversation, halted by the sharp _snap,_ picks up with a stutter. Jody says, “Have you ever tried vegetables?” to Claire, who’s picking the bell peppers off her slice, and Claire snipes, “Have you ever tried _not_ criticizing my decisions?” Jody gets hurt and says, “That’s not fair, Claire,” and then they’re arguing and Jack is stuffing a rolled up piece of pepperoni in his mouth and Sam is trying to be the voice of reason and Dean is off the hook.

He stands from the table with a quiet, “I think I’m gonna turn in for the night,” and throws away his half-eaten slice. Sam tracks Dean with his eyes as he leaves the room, but he stays in his seat, caught between Jody and Claire.

Once Dean reaches his room he pulls off his shirt and chucks it into the corner, then does the same to his jeans. He used to care more about keeping his space clean — he used to dust regularly, change the sheets once a week, keep his laundry in the basket next to the washing machine. It’s hard for him to give a shit about that kind of thing anymore. He can’t remember the last time he bothered to make his bed instead of just crawling in and out of it every morning and every night, ignoring the tacky feel of sheets drenched too many times by his nightmare sweats.

He’s about to pull off his boxers when Sam comes in, knocking as he opens the door.

“Sam, knocking is only courteous if you wait for permission to come in.”

“Right. Sorry.” Sam closes the door anyway, trapping Dean in the room with him. “Look, Dean—”

“Jody and Claire okay?” Dean interrupts, because he knows Sam knows he’s not okay, and he knows Sam wants to talk about it. And Dean doesn’t want to talk about it, because what would it fix?

Nothing. Words can’t bring Cas back. They can’t bring Mom back. Words are useless. Maybe that’s why Dean talks so much less than he used to.

“They’re fine.” Sam sits next to Dean on the bed. “They stopped arguing as soon as you left.” Sam doesn’t need to say _and then we all started worrying about you behind your back_. Good to know Dean’s grief is a unifying force. “We, uh — We actually talked a bit about my plan to save Mom.”

This should be a welcome change of topic. Sam, king of repressed emotions, wants to talk about his desperation instead of Dean’s. And Dean should at least try to support him — he knows Mom is long gone, but if this is the hope Sam chooses to hold, who is Dean to extinguish it?

Except all Dean can think about is Jack ripping open that portal again, them charging in half-cocked to take on Lucifer —  and this time it’s Sam who gets a knife to the back.

“She’s dead, Sam.” Dean’s not looking at Sam when he says this, but he sees his brother’s hand twitch. “She’s dead. Just like Cas. And Bobby. And Dad. And everyone else.”

“I’m not dead.” His voice is shaking. Normally hearing Sam crack would jumpstart Dean’s protective instinct, but tonight it makes him want to dig in deeper.

“No, Sam, you’re not. But you think you won’t be, if Lucifer gets his hands on you?” Dean finally looks up at his brother. Sam’s got that quivering look he gets when he wants to cry, where his mouth starts to make weird shapes and his eyes blink rapidly. “It’s a suicide mission. So no, we’re not gonna use the kid to break into another world. ‘Cause it’s pointless.”

Sam presses his lips together until they start to whiten, then says, “Just because you gave up doesn’t mean I have.”

Dean doesn’t remember the last time he hit Sam. He’s done it more times than he’s proud of — a slap to Sam’s shaking hands when he was coming down from the demon blood and trying to claw at his own skin, a punch to the face when he tried to force Dean to talk about Dad’s death. Dean almost punches him again — his shoulder tenses, his fist clenches, and Sam rears back on instinct.

The look on Sam’s face is like cold water poured over Dean’s head. He drops his fist to his lap and forces his fingers to uncurl. Sam relaxes, but only slightly.

There’s a long, tense pause where they both sit in silence.

Then Dean says, “I didn’t give up. I wanted to — I almost did, that night with the poltergeist. But I tried to get out of the house, Sam. I didn’t want to leave you.”

Sam, realizing they’re talking on two different levels, says softly, “Dean, that’s not—”

“But it kind of is,” Dean interrupts. He watches his hands, turning them over. They’re calloused, bruised. The bones seem more fragile than before, poking at translucent skin. Easily breakable, like they would have shattered had he hit Sam. “You think I gave up on Cas, then gave up on everything. But I didn’t. I prayed, Sam — I begged Chuck to bring them back. All of them — Cas, Mom, even Crowley. And I got nothing. _Nothing_. We save the world for God himself, and he can’t be bothered to pick up the damn phone. And then that night with the fire, I saw Billie.”

Sam’s eyes widen. “Dean, what?”

“She was there while you were trying to save me.” Dean scrunches his eyes, but a tear gets loose and rolls down his cheek. “She told me it wasn’t my time. And I asked her about Cas. Well, I asked her where angels went when they die. And you want to know what she said?”

Sam doesn’t look like he wants to know, but Dean goes on anyway.

“She said, ‘They go nowhere. They become nothing.’ And I can’t get that out of my fucking head. He’s just — _poof_.” Dean laughs — a sharp, bitter thing that cracks as it punches its way out of his throat, alarming Sam. “Done. Everything he ever did, everything he ever meant, gone. And I can’t get him back this time.”

“Dean,” Sam starts again, and Dean doesn’t want to hear more _he knew you loved him_ bullshit, so he says, “I’m still here, Sammy, aren’t I? I’m still here. And you can’t ask me for anything more right now, okay? You just can’t. I can’t pretend Mom’s alive for you; I can’t watch you die trying to save her, I just — I can’t. It takes everything I’ve got just to _be here_.”

He’s not expecting Sam’s arm to wrap around his shoulder, but it does. It’s an odd feeling. Dean’s always been the one inclined to give the comforting hugs, to shoulder Sam’s burdens and carry his little brother through the muck of their life. He expected more of an argument. He did not expect Sam to say, “All I need from you is to be here. I can have faith enough for both of us, okay?”

Dean keeps fucking crying on people, but this time it feels safer — alone in his room with his brother, who’s seen him at his lowest and stuck with him anyway — so Dean lets Sam side-hug him while he cries.

This particular torrent of tears lasts a long time, long enough for Dean’s arm to start tingling where its trapped between their bodies. He pulls away, wiping at his eyes, and Sam smiles at him. It’s shaky, but it’s something.

“I can’t quit trying,” he says, “but I think Jack can look for her without opening the portal. He’s getting stronger every day. And if he can find Mom, he could find Cas, too.”

Dean shakes his head, but Sam insists, “You don’t have to believe right now, but I do. Anyway, that’s how it used to be, right? I was the one who believed in angels, and you’re the one who got one.”

Yeah. Dean got an angel. And then he lost him. He doesn’t say that to Sam, though, because he’s tired and he’s drained and his brain is begging him to lie down. When Sam says goodnight, he can only mumble in return as he lies down, not bothering to pull the blankets up to cover himself.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Dean’s sitting on the edge of a dock, fishing pole in hand, when Jack appears beside him.

“JESUS FUCKING CHR—”

“Sorry,” Jack says, guilty. “I wanted to talk to you after Sam left, but you were already asleep. I didn’t want to wake you up.”

Dean glares out over the water. He hasn’t had this dream in years, yet it used to be his favorite — a moment of respite in a sea of chaos. And now he knows it’s a dream, and worse — now he remembers Cas standing next to him on this very dock, urgently pressing a piece of paper into his hand.

“Jack, I told you to stay out of my head.”

“I know.” Jack flops down on the deck, arranging his long limbs to sit cross-legged. Dean rolls his eyes as the kid settles in. “But I overheard you and Sam — sorry, I know — and I wanted to tell you that I’m trying.”

“Trying what?”

“To find Castiel,” Jack says, ever earnest, and Dean’s stomach churns. “I pray to him every night.”

 _I prayed to you, Cas. Every night._ Dean closes his eyes, and when he opens them again the sky is overcast. The smooth surface of the lake ripples from the center, and the trees surrounding the water shake and sway as if caught in a violent wind.

“I want you to know I’m trying to bring him back,” Jack says, as if he hasn’t noticed the changing dreamscape. “I know you love him, and I know he loved you. So I’m trying to bring him back for you.”

A bolt of lightning cracks open the sky, and the rain pours in. Everything is flooding all around them, but the deck is dry. Jack is keeping the dream at bay. Dean wants to shake him, to say _stop this! I don’t want this circle of light; I don’t want this hope!_ But his mouth won’t open.

Jack said once he felt what Castiel felt, the same way he feels Dean’s grief and longing and the empty spaces in between. And Jack said Cas loved Dean.

Cas loved him.

It’s the sight of a feast after a long famine, the urge to crawl out of a burning building, the dry spot in a downpour — Dean was loved, but it won’t do him any good. He’s going to burn, going to drown, going to starve before he reaches the banquet table.

Cas loved him, and Cas is still gone. Still dead.

“I believe, too, Dean,” Jack says, and he smiles just as the rain reaches them. “I think I’m close. I’ve seen this dream before, but it wasn’t yours.”

Then he’s gone.

The rain crashes down on Dean, flooding the chair he’s sitting in and sweeping his pole and tackle box into the lake. He sputters, head down to keep the rain off his face — still trying to keep his head above water.

The downpour is so thick Dean can barely tell the difference between the wet, darkened wood of the dock and the lake below. He half stumbles, half crawls to the shoreline, digging his fingers into the sand up to his knuckles and pulling himself up the steep bank toward the woods.

There’s a picnic table at the edge of the trees, and Dean runs for it, sliding underneath it in a pathetic attempt to get somewhere dry. Rain trickles through the cracks of the wood, but it’s better than waiting out the storm on the dock.

He almost misses the soft sound of someone’s throat clearing behind him.

Dean half turns to look over his shoulder, and there’s Cas. He’s under the picnic table with Dean, knees to his chest and water droplets dangling from his eyelashes. Dean’s lips part wordlessly, and Cas gives him a small smile.

“The rain’s about to stop,” he says, and it does.

Dean stares at him, now dry and pushing his way out from under the table, dragging his trench coat through the sand. Dean hurries to follow, sitting on the bench next to Cas. The sun is out, and there’s no sign of the storm except for the sound of retreating thunder.

 _It’s not real_ , Dean tells himself, but Cas smiles again, the skin around the corners of his eyes crinkling, and Dean drops his head on Cas’s shoulder.

They sit like that for a while, silent in the sunlight. Cas's trench coat is soft under Dean's cheek, his breathing steady and reassuring. Dean would kill for this to be real.

“I love you,” he says, when he feels like he can speak without bursting into tears and bringing the rain back.

He can’t see Cas’s face from where he’s pressed into the trench coat, but he hears the humor in Cas’s voice when he says, “I know.”

Dean laughs, and it’s close to a sob. “Did you just Han Solo me?”

A hand settles low on Dean’s back.

“I’ve missed you,” Cas says, “I’ve been trying though, Dean.”

It’s the same vague wording Jack used, and it reminds Dean this is only a dream. He’s going to wake up, and Cas will be dead. His hand grasps at the lapel of Cas’s stupid coat. _Just a little while longer._ This is how it’s going to be for the rest of his life, after all — only getting a small taste of what could have been when he sleeps.

“I’ve been trying,” Cas says again, “to get back to you. And I think I’m almost there.”

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/153171695@N06/43431478541/in/dateposted/)

Dean wakes to a buzzing noise he first mistakes for thunder. It keeps going though, insistent and too constant to be from any storm. He cracks one eye open.

His phone is vibrating, rattling against the bedside table. He closes his eye again, trying to pick up that wisp of a dream where Cas came to him at the lake and quoted _Star Wars_ , but it’s gone.

Dean ignores the phone. Sam is the only person who ever calls him these days, and he’s probably just sneakily trying to check in on Dean by asking him what groceries he needs to pick up in Hastings or something. Dean picks a shirt off the floor, smelling the armpits for ripeness before pulling it over his head and searching for jeans.

Jody and Claire walk by in the hallway, arguing again, but at least this time it sounds like they’re only fighting over preferred guns. Dean glances at his alarm clock. 9:05. Jack must be waiting in the kitchen for someone to help him make waffles. Sam’s definitely already on his grocery run. Life goes on.

Dean presses the heel of his hand to his eyes when they start to itch.

“Come on,” he says, thinking of Sam and Jack and faith and _being here_ for the family he has left, including the two women who’ve taken over the bunker. “One day at a time, Winchester.”

His phone starts to buzz again. Dean groans.

He picks it up without looking at the ID, wiping the moisture in his eyes away with the back of his hand as he gruffly says, “Yeah?”

For the first time in months, there's a swooping feeling in Dean's gut not caused by hunger pains, a burning in his eyes not caused by grief, a twinge of hope without despair as a familiar, beloved voice says:

“Hello, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> This started as my coda to 13x01 and turned into something else entirely — something much too long to finish in a day or two. So here it is, a year too late, because I couldn't let go of my love for the grieving!Dean arc. 
> 
> All of the lovely art you saw in the story is the product of lotrspnfangirl’s hard work. She did so much more than she had to do, and she’s awesome.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Graphics for Hunger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15296172) by [lotrspnfangirlgraphics (lotrspnfangirl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotrspnfangirl/pseuds/lotrspnfangirlgraphics)




End file.
